Los Angeles Superior
Court Judge Ross M. Klein is being vetted for a seat on this district’s Court
of Appeal, the MetNews has learned.

Klein, through a court
spokesperson, declined yesterday to comment on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
having forwarded his name to the State Bar Commission on Judicial Nominees
Evaluation.

A former Los Angeles deputy public defender,
Klein was appointed to the Superior Court by Schwarzenegger in 2005 after
serving for five years as a Superior Court commissioner and two years before
that as a municipal court commissioner. He also served pro tem at the Bellflower court branch before
submitting his application for commissioner.

Klein was with the
Public Defender’s Office for 18 years before becoming a commissioner in 1998,
and he served as a volunteer law clerk and then attorney with Bet Tzedek Legal
Services from 1978 to 1980.

A Democrat, he was
admitted to the State Bar in 1979 and graduated from San Fernando Valley
College of Law after attending UCLA.

Klein has served on the
faculty of the New Judicial Officer Training Program as well as on the faculty
of the Center for Judicial Education and Research.

He is currently assigned
to Div. 86 in the San Pedro Courthouse, and has worked in Proposition 36
courts, which are named for a 2000 ballot initiative which requires treatment,
not incarceration, for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders.

Klein grew up in the San Fernando Valley. His father was an
engineer for Litton Industries, and his mother was junior high school physical
education teacher.

He said in a 2003
interview that he came to the law after dismal high school chemistry marks
convinced him to dismiss a medical career. The judge said that during summers
while in high school he would drive his father to work, but would then spend
his days at the Van Nuys Courthouse watching trials instead of hitting the
beach or boardwalks.

Klein maintains an
Internet blog titled “Klein’s Korner,” which shares the same name as a monthly
column he wrote for years analyzing legal issues and which appeared in the
Southeast Bar Association newsletter and “Star News,” the official Los
Angeles County Sheriff’s Department publication.

A vacancy has existed on
Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal since Candace Cooper, the
division’s first presiding justice, stepped down at the end of December.

The JNE commission is
charged by Government Code Sec. 12011.5 with conducting confidential
evaluations of all persons whose names have been submitted to it by the
governor as potential judicial appointees. Except in the last 90 days of a
term, the governor cannot name any person as a judge unless they have been
evaluated by the commission or unless it has failed to complete an evaluation
within 90 days of submission of the person’s name.

The MetNews reported
earlier this year that Schwarzenegger sent the names of Div. Eight Justices
Laurence Rubin and Tricia Bigelow to the commission as possible replacements
for Cooper. If either justice is appointed and confirmed by the Senate, another
vacancy would be created.

The governor recently
sent the name of Orange Superior Court Presiding Judge Kim Dunning to the JNE
Comission as a possible appointee to the court. He had previously sent the
names of Los Angeles Superior Court Judges Eric Taylor, Edward Ferns, Joanne
O’Donnell, James Chalfant, Emilie Elias, Aurelio Munoz—who is now retired—Owen
Lee Kwong, Peter Lichtman, Carl West, Ronald Coen, William Highberger and
Fumiko Wasserman, as well as that of Irell & Manella’s Gregory R. Smith, to
the commission.